Politics

  Kabul / AFP The Afghan Taliban have released aerial footage of a suicide car bombing in southern Helmand province, marking the first time the media-savvy militant group has used a drone to record an attack. The 23-minute video shows a suicide bomber ramming a Humvee into a military base in volatile Nawa district, triggering a mushroom cloud of flames and ...

  Rutba / AFP Iraqi security forces on Tuesday regained full control of a western town that was attacked by IS group militants two days earlier, officials said. Seeking to draw attention away from an offensive to retake the city of Mosul, IS struck the town of Rutba in the country’s west and Kirkuk in the north in recent days. “Our ...

  Mogadishu / AFP A Shabaab suicide bomber rammed a vehicle loaded with explosives into an African Union military base in central Somalia on Tuesday, a security official said. The explosion was followed by heavy gunfire at the Djiboutian base in the city of Beledweyne. Witness Ismail Mahad described seeing “clouds of smoke caused by the heavy blast” followed by “exchange ...

  Qaraqosh / AFP Iraqi forces were inching to within striking distance of eastern Mosul on Tuesday as defence chiefs from the US-led coalition met in Paris to review the offensive on the extremist bastion. Paramilitary forces were also massing near the battlefield to open a western front they say will aim to retake the town of Tal Afar and ...

  Ankara / AFP Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Tuesday Ankara could launch a ground operation in Iraq to remove any threats to Turkey that may arise. “If there is a threat posed to Turkey, we are ready to use all our resources including a ground operation… to eliminate that threat,” Cavusoglu said in an interview with Kanal ...

  Jakarta / AFP Southeast Asia faces a growing risk of extremist violence as IS group supporters increasingly work together, but law enforcement agencies are unprepared for the new threat, a report warned on Tuesday. The main danger lies in the strife-torn southern Philippines, where a handful of extremist groups have sworn allegiance to IS, according to the report from think-tank ...

  Tehran / AFP Iran’s intelligence minister said on Tuesday that a British-Iranian member of its nuclear negotiating team had been cleared of spying allegations, state media reported. Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani, part of the team that secured a nuclear accord with world powers last year, was arrested in August and described by a judiciary spokesman as an “infiltrating spy”. But in ...

  Qayyarah / AFP The smoke from fires lit by IS extremists to provide cover from air strikes has painted the northern Iraqi sky black, providing a dramatic backdrop for the Mosul offensive. The use of smoke in warfare is likely as old as war itself but the masks and technology available to Iraqi forces in this conflict leave civilians, ...

  Baghdad / AFP The IS group “executed” five Iraqis, including members of the security forces, during ongoing fighting in the western town of Rutba, army officers said on Monday. Extremist fighters launched an attack on Rutba, a remote but strategic town near the Jordanian border in Anbar province, early on Sunday. They briefly seized the mayor’s office before being ...

  Baghdad / AFP Iraq’s joint operations command on Monday denied Turkey was participating in military operations to retake the northern city of Mosul from the IS group. “The spokesman of the Joint Operations Command denies Turkish participation of any kind in operations for the liberation of Nineveh,” a statement said, referring to the Iraqi province of which Mosul is ...